Sublime

And that was enough. In early 1954, only five months after Unit 101 had been established, Dayan merged it with the Paratroopers Brigade, with Sharon as one of the battalion commanders. Dayan believed that Unit 101 had become a model—of training and discipline, of dedication and skill—that Sharon could replicate with the paratroops and then in the e

When Kauffman arrived at Fort Pierce in June 1943, he encountered a seemingly untended garden of opportunity, an isolated world where imagination could grow. Stimulated by his combat experience, Kauffman aimed to develop an organization similar in character, if not in function, to the unit that had so impressed him in 1940: the Corps Franc. Surroun

Conner also interacted with his men on a daily basis as he made his rounds through the post on a horse named Old Bill. As Eisenhower put it, Conner “never abandoned the position—and no senior officer ever should—of being an instructor.” Once, Conner encountered some Puerto Rican soldiers on a work detail who did not know how to use a scythe to cut

The first effect back in Israel of our air force attacks was to make our sayeret helicopter missions into the Sinai superfluous. In fact, it left the entire unit at loose ends—especially hard for veterans or reservists like me who had been part of our nearly decade-long development into Israel’s sole, dedicated cross-border infiltration force. At t

One day, Wavell was en route to visit a military post when his car was flagged down by a British officer from his Intelligence staff. A ‘dark, fiery and eager’ captain called Orde Wingate, having ambushed the commander on the highway, abruptly laid out his plan for dealing with the armed Arab gangs: armed Jewish gangs or Special Night Squads, train